


Listen

by MoreThanSlightly (cadignan)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Banshees, Episode: s03e19 Letharia Vulpina, F/F, Minor Character Death, Murder, Revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-18
Updated: 2014-02-18
Packaged: 2018-01-12 23:24:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1204396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cadignan/pseuds/MoreThanSlightly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lydia learns more about her powers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Listen

**Author's Note:**

> A coda to "Letharia Vulpina."

Peter says it’s not the scream. Peter lies.

*

Lydia had her first inkling on the night they found Kira in the power plant.

It’s a funny feeling, knowing that someone is going to die. It makes her feel like a windowpane with crystalline frost pattern creeping over her edges and winter light filtering through. Lydia is a sign post, a warning label, an air raid siren. She is a neon arrow, a vector of only one kind of information: _death this way_.

It doesn’t occur to Lydia that she can channel more than just information until she sees Scott, hunched over in pain beneath the street light, covering his ears.

Absurd that it took her so long to make the connection, really. But she hadn’t intended to hurt Scott. She hadn’t intended to hurt anyone.

But she could.

Lydia tells Scott and Stiles that the buzzing isn’t flies. It’s electricity. There’s electricity coursing through every wire in the city, whirring and vibrating and keeping civilization running. It’s so commonplace you might not notice it, except if there’s way too little or way too much.

It’s kind of like sound, in that way.

Lydia spends the rest of the evening lit up with a different kind of power. It’s one thing to tell yourself—your genius-level IQ self—that knowledge is power. Lydia might not be a werewolf or a hunter but she’s got more brains than all of them combined. It didn’t stop the Darach from nearly strangling her to death. It didn’t stop Peter Hale from using her. Knowledge is useful. It’s important. But it’s not the same as power.

Lydia’s always been precocious. She’s never been short on cynicism, either. Somehow she still feels too young to have learned that power is all about who you can hurt. Power has all kinds of forms—guns and bows and knives and teeth and claws and muscle and magic—but ultimately, it’s all about who you can make scream.

Lydia can make herself scream.

Maybe that’s good enough.

*

Peter says it’s not the scream. What does he know? He knows about her hearing, and that’s important. Almost as important as the way Allison electrocutes his ass.

*

She practices. She goes to the abandoned mall early on Saturday morning, her breath clouding the air, two stolen crystal glasses in the bottom of her purse. Like her mom was ever going to miss them. Lydia unpacks them and sets them on the floor. It takes a few tries to get warmed up: breathe in all the way to the bottom of the lungs, keep the core tight and the throat relaxed, and push the air out.

Her first really good scream sends a flock of starlings scattering into the air, cawing in pitiful mimicry.

She has the volume. It’s a question of finesse, now. She needs to find the right resonant frequency.

Her fourth really good scream shatters both glasses. Thank God she’d had the foresight to stand back. Lydia bends over, plucks a shard of glass from the floor, and smiles.

*

“I want to see Peter again,” she tells Allison.

“What? Why?” Allison sits straight up on the bed. She brushes her hair back from her face and in almost the same motion, she’s up off the bed, reaching for her bow. Other people reflexively check their watches and phones. Other people are a waste of Lydia’s time. “I hope you remember how last time went,” Allison says. She grimaces and raises one brow, like she can’t decide if she’s disgusted or amused. She did kick his ass, after all.

“I need something from him,” Lydia says. “And I know you’re not going to like this, but I have to go alone.”

“No,” Allison says.

“Would’ve been nice if you’d felt that way back when my boyfriend was turning into a murder lizard every night,” Lydia says tartly. She says it on purpose, because she needs Allison to stay away, but it’s not entirely calculated. A girl’s entitled to her grudges.

It works: Allison folds. “I’m sorry, Lydia, I know I shouldn’t have—,”

“So don’t come,” Lydia says.

“Not an option.”

Lydia thinks about the old industrial building where Derek has his loft. She thinks about its storied height, about the huge, echoing spaces inside. She thinks about the windows. “You can stay right outside the building,” Lydia says. “If I need anything, I’ll—,”

Allison relents and gives her the world’s slowest, smallest smile. “Alright,” she says. “You were pretty good with the wolf claws, back there.”

“Thank you.”

*

When she slides open the clanging door, Peter’s there across the room, staring broodily out into the night like he’s practicing for the cover photo shoot of _Evil Assholes_ monthly. “You could try not to be such a cliché,” she says.

He turns and gives her the most utterly expected, boring smug smile. Lydia rolls her eyes. To think _he_ called _her_ a narcissist. He probably practices villainous quips in the mirror every morning. Lydia would bet anything that he was staring at his reflection in the window instead of the city. Nobody thinks more about Peter Hale than Peter Hale. That’s probably why he’s still packless and mooching off his nephew. Loser.

“You want something from me,” he says.

“I do,” she says. She has for a long time. She wants to stop waking up in the middle of the night thinking about his teeth ripping into her. But she can’t have that, so she’ll have to settle. _Men_. A constant disappointment.

Peter Hale is looking at her expectantly, because he hasn’t figured it out. He thinks he’s so smart. He thinks he’s still one step ahead of her. He thinks he’s the big bad wolf who has nothing to fear from a narcissistic little teenage girl.

“What can I do for you, little banshee?” he says. “For a price, of course.”

“Listen,” she says. He waits for a moment, like there’s another sentence coming, but that’s her only instruction. She smiles and breathes in what feels like all the air in the room.

The next time Lydia opens her mouth, it’s to scream.

Peter cringes in pain and reaches for his ears. The window shatters. Normal glass doesn’t have the crystalline structure that causes it to shatter when exposed to certain frequencies, but normal girls don’t scream like Lydia. Peter should have thought of that before he ripped her apart. He’s on the ground now, and the glass shards are still falling, like the air is viscous. Lydia can hear everything: the rush of his blood in his veins, the tinkling sound of the first slivers of glass against the floor, the low sound of agony pouring out of his mouth.

An especially large, sharp fragment of glass slices across his throat. Lydia tilts her head. She could have sworn it was going to fall somewhere else. But it reversed course in the middle of its downward trajectory and flipped back up until it lodged in the flesh of Peter Hale’s throat.  Apparently he did have one last thing to teach her.

Blood pours out of the gash across his neck, but it’s the trickle of red at his ear that catches her eye as she takes one last look.

Peter said it wasn’t the scream. Peter lied.

*

Allison bursts into the room ready to shoot down an army of werewolves. Lydia can’t tell if she’s disappointed that it’s just one petite teenage girl and a partially decapitated loser on the floor. Allison keeps saying “oh my God,” and then after awhile she’s hugging Lydia.

“You screamed,” Allison says. “I thought you were in trouble.”

“I scream when other people are about to die,” Lydia says.

“Is he really—,”

“He’d better be.” Lydia is waiting for all the sounds to stop, for the last whisper of air to leave his lungs and the last drop of blood to drip out onto the floor. It’s getting quieter.

“You know I would have done it for you,” Allison says, and Lydia smiles.

“I know,” she says. It’s sort of macabre, but it’s also probably the sweetest thing anyone’s ever said to Lydia. But she is a dangerous supernatural creature, after all.

She stands up on tiptoes and kisses Allison, and for a moment, all she can hear is the sound of their hearts.

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